Students’ Comprehension of Arabic and English Terminology in Islamic Finance: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The rapid growing of Islamic finance sector is characterized by the establishment of
 Islamic financial institutions as well as Islamic financial market worldwide. Indonesia
 also shows significant development in this sector, which can be observed through the
 founding of various Islamic banking and insurance companies. As a result, Indonesian
 students’ interests in taking majors in Islamic Economics and Business are skyrocketing
 in the last decade. However, this phenomenon is not without any challenges since
 those students come from different educational backgrounds, either Islamic or public
 high schools. Meanwhile, Islamic finance uses much terminology taken from Arabic
 and English languages. This means that students from public high schools may not
 be familiar with the terms from those two languages, particularly the Arabic-derived
 ones. Thus, this study aimed to investigate Islamic Economics and Business UIN SU
 students’ comprehension of Arabic and English Terminology used in Islamic Finance.
 Employing a descriptive quantitative approach, this study used questionnaire as the
 instrument of data collection. The results reveal interesting findings indicating students’
 comprehension of Arabic terminology is significantly higher than that of English one.
 It can be concluded that students coming from either Islamic or public educational
 background have no significant differences in understanding Islamic financial terms
 derived from Arabic and English languages.